Thread by @yhazony

Andrew, I’m surprised at this. Burke is famous for breaking with the Whig party over the French Revolution—and allying himself with the Tories.

Throughout he claimed loyalty to the “Old Whigs” (traditionalist conservatives) and rejected the “New Whigs” (today’s liberals).

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https://twitter.com/sullydish/status/1462365742465232902

What did Burke and the Old Whigs believe? They defended tradition, the established church, monarchy, and aristocracy—against liberals (New Whigs) like Richard Price, Charles James Fox, Priestly, Paine and Jefferson, who favored reason, equality and religious disestablishment.

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Old Whigs did uphold the rights of Parliament against what they saw as the excessive claims of the king. Their heroes were common lawyers such as Fortescue, Coke, Selden, and Hale, who supported the tradition of parliamentary rights and a balance between king and parliament.

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But none of these Old Whigs were liberals. They were conservatives supporting what they saw as the traditional balance of power between king and parliament.

Burke wrote a book (“An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs”) making exactly this argument.

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So no—Burke never did and never would have supported anything remotely like today’s liberalism.

And in his own day, when he saw that his Whig party was heading in the direction of Lockean liberalism, he broke with his party and its new ideology.

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If you want to read more about the tradition of English conservatism that Burke was upholding when he rejected New Whig liberalism, take a look here:

americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/05/what-i…

Note this question and @haivry’s reply:

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https://twitter.com/haivry/status/1462813229470601220